


You Know I Really, Really Want to be Your Friend

by keithsguitar



Category: The Rolling Stones
Genre: Friends in love, Gen, lots of dialogue and lots of ~thoughts~, spans like 8 years, this is basically meta, very soft moments and realizations of a very important friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:35:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28733541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keithsguitar/pseuds/keithsguitar
Summary: Three times Mick and Keith kissed: once in their crappy shared apartment, once high in living their dreams, and once after a tough patch. All in the context of their consuming and intense friendship.
Relationships: Mick Jagger/Keith Richards
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	You Know I Really, Really Want to be Your Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Hi y’all! 
> 
> This is my first time posting on here and my first time writing about this... hopefully it’s ok. Like I said, this is basically meta. I tried my best to keep all events close to as what we’ve heard and not make up anything—just filled in dialogue and thoughts and obviously the kisses—so hopefully I did their masterpiece of a friendship justice. 
> 
> I hope y’all like it. I’d appreciate any feedback and thanks for reading!

——Edith Grove, 1963——

England froze over during the winter, the cold creeping into every crook of every home. In their shared bedroom on Edith Grove, Keith and Mick laid in their beds, stiff from the cold. 

“It’s bloody freezing,” Mick said. During nights, not even all the blankets in the world could keep them warm enough. 

“You could always sleep here,” Keith suggested nonchalantly. 

Mick normally would’ve agreed because they usually shared a bed to essentially survive the cold nights. What restrained him was knowing if Brian woke up earlier, he would come in, finding them more or less entangled. They didn’t go to sleep like that, but they always woke their limbs in a knot. However, one morning, Charlie and Bill had been there too. Brian proceeded to make some joke, which the three of them had been laughing at since. “Even if they walk in again?” Mick joked, dodging Keith’s invitation. 

“I didn’t think anything of it,” Keith shrugged. The group got on fine, but it was clear the two of them were closer and maybe it warranted teasing. 

Mick nodded but didn’t move. 

“We were cold,” Keith said, laughing at Mick’s paranoia. Truthfully, he didn’t think anything special of it. He and Mick shared everything. They shared a room, wardrobes, music, thoughts. A bed was just an addition to an ongoing list. 

Mick ran his fingers over his silver chain bracelet, hoping to see the one dangling from Keith’s wrist in the pale moonlight flooding the room. He had this one for so long and would lend it to Keith from time to time. He had gifted him one identical to his own a few weeks ago. Keith had been such a fan of the idea, he had saved up meager cuts from gigs to get matching silver rings shortly after. 

“Well, come on over then,” Keith said, flinging the blankets off one side of the bed. It didn’t usually take even an invitation for Mick to want to share the bed with him. In fact, most of the time Mick was the one who constantly invaded his space, but Keith didn’t mind that or asking him once or twice to get close. 

Mick thought for a second. “Their teasing was just horrid. They wouldn’t shut up about it for days.” 

“For fuck’s sake, Mick,” Keith hissed through shivers. “Get over here.”

“Fine, fine,” he complied, jumping off his bed onto Keith’s. He got into the spot Keith had made for him and covered himself with the blankets. 

The both laid facing the ceiling. Their beds were so small, they couldn’t lay there without their sides touching. During the winter, it wasn’t a bad thing because they warmed up rather fast from the other’s body heat. 

Keith turned his head slightly to look at Mick. He was mostly just shadows, but he could make out the silhouette of his face. He reached for his hand under the covers, curious to see if he was wearing his gift. His fingers grazed over his pinky, which was cuffed by the silver ring. 

Mick turned his head around to face him. Neither of them could point to the moment when their friendship had slipped to an infatuation. At what point had a “you look familiar” on a random day turn in to matching jewelry and sharing beds? To planning a future together with someone who had been an acquaintance a few mere months ago?

They were in silence a little while longer, neither of them close to falling asleep yet. “I wish you didn’t go to school,” Keith said. He appreciated playing alongside Brian, as a guitarist, but he missed Mick during the day. Playing felt better when Mick sang over his melodies. 

“Me too,” Mick admitted, hooking his pinky finger around Keith’s. It felt oddly painful to part ways with him for most of the day. If someone had asked what they even did the many hours they did spend together, Mick wouldn’t be able to answer. Maybe mostly Keith strumming some tune, playing out a stage for him to sing and dance on. If he did anything too ridiculous, which he often did, Keith would break out in a laugh, but kept the song steady for him. “I gotta have a backup,” Mick said apologetically. 

“It’ll work out, Mick,” Keith assured him. “The band’s gonna make it. We’re a good team.”

Mick nodded, thinking it was easier if Keith thought he agreed with him. He worried this might change things for Keith. He didn’t want a single aspect of their friendship to change. 

“What do you think it’ll be like when we’re famous?” Keith prompted. He couldn’t think of things and put them into words like Mick. All Keith could do was feel in his bones things were going to pan out, so he let Mick verbalize what he felt. 

“Uh,” Mick spoke into the dark room. “We’ll sell out every show until we’re old and wrinkly, maybe even go on a few tours. And you’ll have a hundred guitars. We’ll have houses around the world and date models,” Mick rambled on about ridiculous ideas to entertain Keith’s question. He wasn’t sure if these things would happen, after all that’s why he was still in school, but the way Keith believed in it so much made him want to have the same faith. 

“And we’ll still write songs together?” 

There was something so inherently endearing about Keith. He was terribly quiet around everyone else. He had just warmed up to the rest of their band well enough, but Mick selfishly loved being the only person who got to see Keith for exactly who he was. “Of course we will,” Mick assured. He hadn’t even mentioned it because he took it as granted. Of course they would. He remembered one day Brian had approached him, telling he found a band doing better than them that wanted to take just the two of them. Mick didn’t entertain him for a second, telling him he wouldn’t go anywhere without Keith. There wasn’t a point in doing anything if it wasn’t with him. 

“See, you see it too.” The day he had reencountered Mick, he had written he was sure he was the best rhythm and blues singer on their side of the Atlantic, and to quote himself, “he didn’t mean maybe.” He wished Mick could believe in his potential the way he did. 

Mick supposed if he could think of these things, these dreams might live in his subconscious. It wasn’t as if he was torn between Keith and music and school. If it wasn’t for the fear of failing, it would’ve been the easiest choice he would ever make. 

The silence ensued for a while longer, the sound of wind beating against the window filling the air. Both of their faces were still turned to each other. Every exhale was accompanied by a little white puffs of air they could only see because they were inches from each other’s mouths. Not sure if it was out of curiosity or not, they leaned in until their lips met. It was a tentative kiss, barely a second. 

They ripped apart when they heard Brian’s door open down the hall. They hadn’t moved from each other’s faces in fear of making the bed make any noise. Two relieved groans left their mouths when they realized he got up to use the bathroom. 

“Oh, God. He’s just taking a piss,” Keith sighed in relief, rolling on his back. Every few mornings Brian would make a comment referring to them sharing the bed, but if he found out about this, they’d never hear the end of it. 

Keith wiped at his mouth, his face crinkling up a little which caused Mick to let out a laugh loud enough for Keith to wonder if the shuffling footsteps would barge in asking what was so funny. He hadn’t stopped in a few seconds, then Keith joined in, realizing how stupid this all had been. 

“Was that too weird?” Mick asked. 

“We should go out tomorrow. Meet some birds,” Keith suggested, indirectly answering his question. “Maybe bring them here.” 

“I don’t think you could bring a girl home,” Mick bantered. 

“Oh, fuck off, I can too,” Keith said half-heartedly, not believing it himself either. “You could probably bring two and help a friend out,” he conceded after a second’s thought. He knew how charming Mick was. He had yet to see any girl turn him down, yet, more often than not, Mick stuck with him even when they went out.

“A blonde?” 

Keith hummed in agreement. “So you think we’ll still like each other when we’re old and wrinkly?”

“We still like each other now and we’ve known each other before we were five,” Mick pointed out. He hoped their lives would always be as entangled as they have been. 

“I reckon it’s a longer time to old and wrinkly,” Keith thought aloud. 

“If we lose touch, we’ll bump into each other at another station down the line.” A few weeks ago, he brought it up to him. He told Keith it had been fate that brought them back together at the station. Although Keith had laughed and teased him for being dramatic, he thought the same. 

“Mick?”

In the second it took for him to continue his sentence, time felt suspended for the both of them. They felt entirely close to each other. 

“You’re my best mate,” Keith affirmed. In all his boyish charm, he managed to strum each of Mick’s heartstrings as well as he could the ones on his guitar. 

“You’re mine too, Keith.”

——Redlands, 1967——

Although only a couple of years since they were living in Edith Grove, so much had changed. Then, Keith and Brian had to shoplift to have money for rent, but Keith had recently bought a decently sized estate he shared with his girlfriend. Mick also had a nice place for himself, but he spent days at a time here with Keith.

It was surreal to see how so much and so little can change at a time. 

He and Marianne had arrived early yesterday evening and spent the night. This was a regular occurrence, as Mick and Marianne couldn’t seem to get enough of their hosts. Mick couldn’t have been offended with Marianne’s supposedly secret crush on Keith because he understood her exactly. Keith had grown so handsome and entrancing, even Mick had confessed to carrying a torch for his longtime friend to his girlfriend. 

Usually, when Mick and Marianne arrived, the boys greeted each other like children meeting for a play date, scurrying off down the hallways, itching to show each other a new tune they had dreamt of or a few lines of a song that had occurred to them in the shower. They would emerge only if dinner was especially appetizing that night. If not, Anita and Marianne wouldn’t see them until noon the next day.

This visit played out in similar fashion. When they woke late into the day, they made plans over breakfast to slip out by themselves to spend time alone before the evening. Psychedelics had taken London by storm, and Mick and Keith had become quite the experimenters. 

“Darling, ready to head out?” Keith called out from the back door.

“Yes, dear,” Mick replied, appearing from around the corner as he hopped on his left foot while slipping his right shoe over his heel.

They stepped out into the outside, and Keith handed Mick some of the stimulant. They both took it and began their trek while they waited for their trip to start. 

“Nice jacket. I didn’t know so many colors existed,” Mick teased. Crazy, colorful clothes came included with the psychedelic craze which he thoroughly enjoyed. He was turning into a fashion snob himself. 

“Wait till you see this.” Keith turned around, showing Mick the back of his blazer which had a doodle of a blue man with curly red hair plastered on it. 

Mick traced some of the strands of hair with his finger, beginning to feel some effects of the drug because he swore he saw the man on the blazer blink. 

“Do you like it?” Keith asked. He had grown to be independent in the sense he was opposite of his once inhibited self. He truthfully didn’t care for people’s opinions too much, but part of him wanted Mick to esteem what he did. 

“You should let me borrow it sometime,” Mick replied. 

“Take it home with you,” Keith said, as he took a right on a newly and roughly cleared out pathway. Mick followed where Keith led. 

They walked for a few minutes in comfortable silence between them which was interrupted every once in a while by a small animal crawling over branches or chirping from birds. Mick smiled to himself; it felt ridiculous to love wasting days away with Keith this much. No work, no friends, no parties, just the two of them in funny clothes on funny drugs. 

“How about here?” Keith asked, extending his arm in gesture to the large, green space. Mick agreed silently by stepping into the clearing.

By now, the effect of the drugs were kicking in. The trees looked like ballerinas, their limb-like branches stretching and twirling. The emerald green grass looked like a perfect mattress to sit down on and watch clouds pass by. Keith took to the floor, Mick following. 

“This is a nice trip,” Keith said after a while which could’ve been seconds or hours—he couldn’t tell anymore. He was lying on his back, propped on his elbow, and looked up at Mick who was sitting criss-crossed, messing with the grass. In fact, he thought it was a nice day. These long and languorous days with Mick, truly the only other person he had ever met who he could enjoy hours of nothing with, rivaled nights of shows and parties. 

“It is,” Mick agreed, pulling out fistfuls of grass and throwing them up in the air like confetti. 

“Anita has bad trips.” Keith didn’t like going on them as much with her as with Mick. He caught a few blades of grass that floated down the air. 

“And Brian,” Mick added.

“And...” Keith trailed off, wanting to add to the list but not being able to think of any more names. He was glad Mick was always someone he could count on to have a nice time. “We should write a song on a trip,” Keith suggested, craning his head, half expecting a guitar to appear in the middle of his lawn. 

“Whatever you want,” Mick hummed, lifting a handful of inviting blades of grass up to his mouth, curious to see how they tasted. Although LSD made his speech sluggish and gave him hallucinations that made grass an appealing meal, Mick pondered over his friend. He couldn’t comprehend Keith being human—he was more of an ethereal being. Everything about him was perfect yet came with such effortlessness. He was in love with him, and even if it wasn’t in the same way, it felt as if it was mutual. Mick knew Keith never wondered to Anita what it would be like to kiss him the way he dared to with Marianne, but he knew he was still his preferred companion. In the spirit of being in love, this was more than enough. 

While Mick concentrated on the grass, Keith turned up to the open sky, which the tangled branches framing it in a vignette. As the clouds pranced over as leisurely as he felt, one came over that he thought looked like Mick; they both had the same soft hair. Keith remembered a night when he told him he was his best mate; he still felt the same. He realized he wasn’t as fervent in devotion through words or actions as he once had, but he supposed it was a change of his own personality and not a change in feelings towards his friend. Though virtually every aspect of his life had changed and had the potential to keep changing, he figured it was alright as long as Mick never left. 

Riddled in his thoughts, Keith reached his hand up, pulling Mick closer by tugging on the collar of his coat. 

When Mick daydreamed of this moment, he had always thought his heart would beat out of his chest, but the drugs had relaxed him enough to feel as if he was just drifting Keith’s way. Once he was close enough, Keith put his hand around the back of his head. When finally closing the space between them, he completely missed. His mouth wound up half-open on Mick’s cheek. 

“I think you missed,” Mick said as he pulled back, a languid laugh leaving him.

“Oh, right. Shit,” Keith mumbled, returning Mick’s laugh. He barely realized what he was doing, but he didn’t have the exact words to tell Mick how happy he was that he chose to take days out of his event-packed agenda at the opera or a film party or dinner with snobby socialites to lay around with his old friend. 

“How high are you?” Mick asked after a second, thinking he would believe Keith was exaggerating even if he said very. 

“I’m bloody high, Mick,” he whispered to him. His pupils were so large and his eyes not focused on anything, despite scrambling all over Mick’s face in attempt to fixate on something. 

Mick laughed a little. 

“I’m blasted,” Keith added as if Mick needed any more confirmation. 

“I can tell,” Mick assured him. 

“So are you,” he said, shoving an unsteady finger in Mick’s chest. “You were eating fucking grass,” he said through languid laughs.

“I guess I must be blasted as well,” he said, joining him in his laughing with a giggle rising from the realization. 

“I saw a cloud that looked just like you. Maybe if we sit here for long enough, it’ll pass by again,” Keith said. He was too high to realize how ridiculous his suggestion was.

Mick craned his head up to the sky, following Keith’s queue, equally as gone to tell Keith it wasn’t going to pass by again. 

——St. Tropez, 1971——

It must have not been a good day for a wedding. The ceremony had started almost an hour late, and it had felt as if everyone was walking on eggshells. Seconds after Mick and Bianca were pronounced wed, Mick and Keith stepped out of the room and walked to where they were going to meet a photographer.

“Congratulations to the man of the hour,” Keith said, making time while the photographer arrived.

“I don’t feel like the man of the hour.” 

“Why did you get there so late?”

“Bianca and I got into a fight at the registry. She didn’t want to sign the prenup. Got cold feet after, I guess,” Mick shrugged, leaving out the part where Bianca told him Keith looked completely inappropriate for the event. He didn’t know if she referred to his white apparel or the fact he probably hadn’t cleaned up too well, but he chose to ignore her comment. She only brought Keith up when they were fighting to provoke him. 

“That blows.” Keith didn’t mention it to Mick, but Anita and him got into a screaming match that morning. He blamed it on the fact he woke up unusually irritated. She and Marlon cried, and it took forever to get to the wedding. 

“Must not be a romantic day today.” 

“Kind of odd for a wedding, no?” Keith assumed this shit of a show must’ve started when Mick had talked about proposing to Bianca. Keith had brushed it off. After all, it was Mick—he needed a fancy, foreign socialite for his groups of friends. Then Mick asked him to be his best man. He didn’t think he’d ask anyone else, but given the tension forming and him storming from Nellcote, it felt unexpected. Nonetheless, he accepted, but not before half-jokingly inquiring if he was still going through with “that whole thing.” 

Mick didn’t reply for a minute. He asked Keith to be his best man because he was supposed to be his best friend, but it hadn’t felt like it in a while. He was frustrated at how the events had transpired between them. They hadn’t had much contact since Mick left Nellcote for Paris after scraping a few songs together. They hadn’t had much contact in a long time, in fact. Keith had discovered harder drugs and made many different friends, driving wedges between them. 

“So why’d you marry her anyway?” Keith asked as he lit a cigarette. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to gain from asking or what he wanted Mick to say. Maybe he wanted Mick to prove him right and tell him he didn’t love her the way he should, that she was just a shiny trophy for him to flaunt. He wasn’t jealous over his friend; he wasn’t the type. Mick could have a hundred girlfriends and thousands of friends—which he did—and it was fine by him. 

Keith and Bianca weren’t friendly, but he wasn’t going to pull a “Mick in Nellcote” and give Bianca the same cold shoulder Mick had given Gram; they simply preferred to limit their interactions to just civil. He hadn’t yet made sense of why his distaste for Mick’s fiancée correlated to Mick’s distaste of him having other friends, but he had accepted he and Mick had an increasingly complicated relationship. He wasn’t going to try to make sense of it. 

“She’s pregnant. It’s the right thing to do,” Mick said as if it was obvious. 

Keith didn’t bother entertaining his obvious lie, not buying it for a second. “I reckon that’s also why you left Nellcote? To tend after your pregnant wife, then?” Keith asked.

Mick hadn’t heard Keith ask so many questions in years. Most of the time it felt as if he didn’t really care about what happened, let alone interrogate him. 

“Sounds right to me,” Mick replied. He could tell Keith was irritated, but didn’t know what he was mad at him for. He wasn’t the one who cooped up some random hanger-on, spending every waking second with.

“Ah. Didn’t know you were so inventive.” He knew it wasn’t the reason. Once they had fled England, Mick had rented a place in Paris with Bianca, but he spent weeks at a time in Nellcote. Of course he did; Mick was his shadow’s double. He was always around, even since he had bought Redlands. He always tagged with him and Anita and had even put up with Gram. He wasn’t sure of the context, but knew his place in Mick’s life was exogenous and near, if not, number one, so he didn’t understand what was so special about Bianca for him to leave him. 

Mick said nothing, honestly running out of steam to fight against Keith’s offensive position. Of course that’s not why he left. It’s not like he had rushed to be a father to his first daughter. He hated the dingy, wet basement they recorded in and despised operating on what the band had dubbed “Keith time,” but he would’ve done it for longer, maybe even the rest of his life, if that was what Keith wanted. He just wasn’t happy sharing his friend with people that just wanted to see him waste away, not happy knowing Keith wanted to be shared.

His silence gave him away, answering for him. 

Keith scoffed, releasing a gray cloud of smoke from his mouth, and rolled his eyes. The smoke settled over Mick’s face, but he was clear as ever to Keith. He wished Mick wasn’t constantly on him about his other friends. Sooner rather than later, anyone who tried to get close would come to him asking why they felt Mick didn’t like them. “What’s it to him? Why does he care?” they’d ask him and he’d have nothing to say. 

Mick pushed out a frustrated huff of air. Life moved fast. Mick remembered less than a decade ago they shared a bed to keep warm during the winter and Keith got drunk off half a bottle of wine. It seemed that they outgrew their lives from one year to the next, and Mick felt his desperate efforts to make sure Keith and him didn’t outgrow each other were as futile and hopeless as stopping time. He didn’t understand why their growing apart didn’t break Keith’s heart as it did his. 

Seeing Mick sigh that sad and frustrated breath, Keith figured something had to give. Over the years, he became aware of this hold he had over Mick; it felt wrong to abuse it. It was hard to not be in undeniable synchronization with him; they had no practice walking to different beats. “I don’t want to fight anymore,” Keith sighed. “Not with you, darling.”

Mick was relieved Keith backed off. He had grown to be so stubborn and guarded and absent; it had left Mick figuring out how to go about talking to him for the first time. He stuck his hands in his pockets, uncharacteristically unsure of what was supposed to be said.

“I kicked him out,” Keith said after a few seconds.“After you left. I booted him and the ‘hanger-ons’ to the curb,” Keith conceded, using Mick’s nickname for all of the people Keith invited along with them. He left it at that. He didn’t let Mick know that the reason he had done so was because a million friendships would never compare to what he and Mick had. Shooting off and passing tunes with Gram all day was fun, but not if the old ball and chain wasn’t there. Nellcote finally felt dirty, chaotic, and sad without him and he also packed up and left. He wished Mick didn’t need the assurance, but if it took saying goodbye to a few special friends or the lot of them, he’d do it for him. 

Mick was shocked to hear how things had played out. He had been horribly jealous of Gram; everyone knew without Mick even having to say it. He constantly tried to pick fights with him and make scenes, which only pushed him farther from Keith. He knew it must’ve taken a lot for Keith to have done so; he knew Gram meant a lot to him. “It should’ve been us up there today,” Mick said quietly, hoping to air out with a joke. 

“Could’ve been. I had gotten rings ages ago,” Keith played along. He put his cigarette out, running the stub into the cobblestone with his battered shoe.

Mick was taken aback. He couldn’t have imagined Keith remembered their starry-eyed token of friendship. “When Bianca and I get divorced, I’ll marry you next,” Mick promised.

Both of them shared a quiet laugh, amused at the ridiculousness of Mick referencing a pending divorce on his wedding day. 

Keith supposed it was settled; he finally didn’t have anything else to say. He grabbed Mick’s chin and slightly turned his head to the side and pressed a kiss to his cheek. 

Mick hadn’t even half-expected Keith to do that, but it was nice to catch glimpses of the sweet boy he once was within this torn and frayed exterior he sometimes had a hard time recognizing. 

The photographer had finally arrived and caught a few shots of the made-up couple. It was a short affair, as Mick and Keith had grown used to being constantly in the camera’s eyes and couldn’t bring themselves to pay it much attention. They carried on with some conversation, letting the shutters capture the moments after their reconciliation. 

“Alright, then,” Keith said after the photographer had left. He extended his arm out. “Come on. We got a party to get to.” 

Mick followed his queue and stepped under his arm. “And it’s not a party until Keith Richards shows up or what?” Mick said, knowing it was highly likely he and Anita would have to carry Keith to his hotel room at the end of the night.

Keith chuckled, his laugh increasingly becoming raspier over the years from his smoking habit. “I’ll behave,” he promised. “It’s your wedding, and I’m your best man. I’ve got to impress.”

“Oh sure,” Mick scoffed pretending to believe him. “Impress them with how fast you’ll pass out, you mean.”

They walked down the extended balcony that overlooked St. Tropez, on their way to the reception. Once at the entrance to his wedding party, Mick was pulled aside and informed that Bianca had left. For some reason, Mick stayed, not managing to find enough of a care to chase after his newlywed. He convinced himself it was because he had guests to entertain, but his intentions were increasingly obvious to him when he routinely looked for Keith as the hours passed, worried of how far gone he’d be.

A few hours into the reception, Keith found Mick, stumbling his way, finally falling on the cushion in front of where he was sitting. After a few seconds, he gathered enough energy to roll on his back.

“Having fun?” Mick said preoccupying his attention, thus excusing himself from the conversation with the people around him. 

He made a sound between a sigh and a grunt. They had a juxtaposition about them. Mick was still wearing his pressed white blazer, but had changed into some of Keith’s old pants. His hair still the way he had styled it this morning. Keith’s hair was a mess, his shirt was untucked and pushed up halfway up his torso. 

“Where’s Anita?”

Keith sluggishly shrugged. “Haven’t seen her since we got here,” he said, his voice tired. 

“Ah,” Mick said as looked down to a brazen Keith at his feet. He paused a second to look at his soon-to-be passed out partner’s eyes fluttering, fighting to stay open. Mick found his habits rather sleazy; he damned the soft spot he had for him. 

“Where’s your wife?” Keith asked in an unintelligible manner. Mick had learned recently he was the only one that could understand him when he got like this.

“She left while we were outside,” Mick replied, pushing a lock of sweaty hair from Keith’s eyes.

“You’re kinda my wife, you know. In a way,” Keith said, the words stumbling out of his mouth. 

In a way he was. Mick watched Keith close his eyes for the night. ‘Til death do us part.


End file.
